Several months ago I was informed by Clockwork bass, Stephen Saxon, that the baritone of the Swingle Singers (http://swinglesingers.com) was leaving the group and that they were holding auditions for a replacement. Stephen has been exchanging emails with the Swingle's bass Tobi (Tobias Hug) for a couple of years.
I first became aware of the Swingles when they were making hit recordings of Bach fugues in the 1970s. Ward Swingle started putting scat syllables and jazz beats to baroque and classical works with a group called the Double Six of Paris. He moved to London and formed the Swingle Singers to continue this pursuit and was rather surprised when they became extremely popular. The group has survived to this day.
Several years ago I had the pleasure of spending several days with Ward Swingle during the West Coast A Cappella Summit. I was attending his lecture with Michelle Mailhot (now Michelle Mailhot-Valines) of Toxic Audio (www.toxicaudio.com). She was Ward's chaffeur for the event but she suddenly realized she had a sound check for the evening concert, so I volunteered to help her out. Gee - I have Ward Swingle to myself for a whole afternoon, I guess I can manage That afternoon I learned that Ward and I had performed the same part (Second Tenor) in Luciano Berio's Sinfonia. I knew Sinfonia was composed for the Swingle Singers but I did not know until then why the Second Tenor part was so huge. Berio wrote it especially for Ward Swingle.
The week after the Summit, John Neal (www.singers.com) got eight local singers, including Michelle, Angie (Clockwork/PME) Doctor, and me, to be guinea pigs for Mr. Swingle in a teaching video called "Swingle Singing" based on his book of the same name. It was directed by Richard "Bob" Greene, who later produced Tesseract for Clockwork.
I could not resist the temptation to go for the audition. There were two times during the summer when I decided not to do it. If I got into the Swingles I would have to move to London and then try to figure out how to juggle all the other good things in my life, like my wife Jacquie (she has her own business with strong Bay Area ties - www.vibrancecoach.com), my vocal group, The Pacific Mozart Ensemble (PME - www.pacificmozart.org), and, of course, Clockwork (www.clockworksingers.com). Besides, I was almost twice as old as any of the current Swingles.
Finally I sent my resume and recordings to Tom Bullard, tenor and music director, and waited to hear if they wanted me to go to London. I did not get any messages until about a month later when Tom informed me that the packet had not arrived, and that the deadline was that day, August 21. As if this wasn't bad enough, I was at that moment in a remote town 200 miles north of Tokyo (see my Clockwork blog) and could do nothing about it. Fortunately, Tom was understanding, especially when he subsequently discovered that the packet had, in fact, arrived at their office a month earlier and had been forwarded to his home address, only to vanish in the Royal mail service for four weeks.
When I got back from Japan and saw that I was invited to London after all, I leaped into action. I found a flight and a hotel, and, oh yeah, I retired from my job. It wasn't quite that spontaneous - I had already planned to retire that week. The trip was somewhat complicated by the fact that it was in the middle of High Holy Days, and I was singing in the Peninsula Temple Beth El choir for Cantor Stephen Saxon (yes, Clockwork Stephen). Small world - not only was Angie in the choir, so was Avi Jacobson, formerly of PME and now bass for the Edlos (www.mascot2.com/edlos). Smaller world - Avi sang with Swingle alto Kineret Maor in Israel. When I rushed out of the temple after Rosh Hashana services to catch my plane, Avi was the last person I said good-bye to. Two days later I met Kineret.
The audition worked like this - on Monday I had to sing three solos, one classical/baroque, one jazz, and one pop tune. If I made it past day one, I would then sing on mic with the group. Here is the kicker: I (and all the other candidates) had to memorize seven charts in case we made it to round two. Swingle charts are not simple, and some of them were a real bear to memorize, because they have complex harmonies, lots of words, and tend to be through-composed (i. e., very few repeated sections). I spent most of my waking hours for two months learning the baritone parts for:
Fugue in A minor, Ciao Bella Ciao, Country Dances, Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho, My Fair Lady Medley, Straighten Up and Fly Right, Drive My Car
There were also excerpts from Sinfonia and another modern piece that were challenging but did not need to be memorized.
For my solos I chose:
Papageno's aria from Act I of The Magic Flute (Mozart), "When Sunny Gets Blue", and "Save the Last Dance for Me".
The entire group (minus the departing baritone) was there for the day one auditions. There were five other candidates that day plus six more who had already made it past day one. Everyone was very friendly and they were a pleasure to sing for - smiling, taking notes whenever I did something particularly interesting, generally quite supportive.
Although I felt great about my solos, I figured that the fact I had, indeed, memorized all the material, including nuances like dynamics and tempo changes, and had a lot of experience on microphones - especially with Clockwork - would be what would distinguish me. My audtion was from 11:00AM to 11:30AM, and I figured they would be done by about 1:00PM. My only means of contact was email via internet cafes, so after spending a luxurious time in the nearby British Museum I went on-line about 2:00 waiting for a message.
This became sort of like an IM session with Stephen and Jacquie. I would check for an email, find one from Stephen or Jacquie, answer it, then check again. I used the time to write down my experiences and feelings, which I am reviewing now to remind me how it was that day.
At about 3:30PM, I finally got a message from their office that I had not made it past round one. There was immediate disappointment, but it was quickly followed by relief. All the juggling, which I never did figure out, would not have to happen. Jacquie tells me to check my body for feelings, and I noticed a curious, almost complete cancellation between the disappointment and the relief - like they were waves of equal frequency and opposite phase (sorry, I was an engineer for 23 years).
The consolation prize was a totally free day in London on Tuesday - wow! I walked all around town, spent three hours in the Tate Modern, and saw Antony and Cleopatra at the Globe. I also had three great Indian meals in the three nights I was there. Life could be a lot worse.
During this adventure, I got nothing but support and encouragement from everyone close to me, including those who would be most affected by all the juggling I mentioned - members of PME, fellow Clockworkers, family, and above all Jacquie. Jacquie urged me to pursue this and promised to do whatever it would take to make it work. When it was over, the universal message was: the Swingles blew it, sorry I didn't get the gig, great that I am staying in California. Thank you, everyone, for your love.
I awake bleary-eyed to the realization that we participated in something incredible last night. There are so many aspects of this experience that I want to hold on to. I know my memory fades quicker than most. It makes me a little sad that I will not be able to remember every moment of yesterday. I guess that's one of the main reasons I write this blog. It started with the trip to NY last year. I'm finding that I go back and re-read entries all the time. It helps me to not forget the things that I've done that mean so much to me.
Aside from the show itself, the best part of the day was a little rehearsal we had. It was just us and Sufjan in a little piano room in the basement of Zellerbach. At first I was sweating bullets. I lied and said it was from rushing around, but really it was nervousness plain and simple. Moment of truth time. We've been sharing charts and notes but this is the first time he hears what we actually sound like. We started with something easy. Actually, it was a chart I threw together just the day before! At 3pm on Monday I got an email from Lisa that they wanted us to sing on "He Woke Me Up Again." Yikes! Fortunately it's pretty simple so I threw together the chart for our rehearsal that night. So that's the first song we sang. As he we started singing I started to feel a little calmer. In the end it put everyone's mind at ease bing able to run the tunes. Also, the folks got to get a sense of him as a person, which totally relaxed them. After working with some very unapproachable types (like a certain symphony director we all know) it was great to realize we're just working with a fellow performer.
